US-based advanced automotive battery pack ‘remanufacturer’ Spiers New Technologies (SNT) is opening a European ‘hub’ in the Netherlands.
SNT said it will use the site at Ede to service automotive OEMs in Europe’s electric vehicle (EV) market.
CEO and Dutch native Dirk Spiers (pictured) said: “We can’t afford to ignore the European market. Our new Dutch facility lets us serve that market.”
Spiers said the Oklahoma-headquartered company “basically invented the business and technology of grading, repairing and remanufacturing advanced batteries that have been removed from EVs because of warranty or other issues— and then returning them to a vehicle or to a different second life use”.
“If you have to throw away the entire battery pack every time there is an issue, owning and operating EVs would become impossibly expensive,” Spiers said.
“It is easy to dismiss EVs as a niche market, but improving battery technology, climate change concerns, ride sharing and autonomous vehicles, will all drive the electrification of motor vehicles. Within 10 years, EVs will be a major force in the transportation sector.”
The Dutch SNT facility is expected to be fully operational by the second half of this year. 2018. “We are basically cloning the processes and technologies we have developed in Oklahoma at our new facility in Europe,” Spiers said.
